The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1887-05-05

cbild's ro IN late at night. You suddenly go
in and say: "What are you doingf' "I am
reading" "What are you reading" "a
book" You look at the book; it is a bad
book. "Where did you get it!' Il bor-
rowod it.n Alas, there are always those
abroad who would like to loan your son or
daughter bad book. Everywhere, every
where an unclean literature. charge upon
it the destruction of 10000 immortal souls,
and bid you this morning wake up'to the
magnitude of the theme. l shall take all the
worlds literature-good novels and bad.
travels true and false, histories faithful and
incorrect, legends beautiful and monstrous,
all tracts, all chronicles, all epilogues, all
family, city, state and national libraries-and
pile them up in a pyramid of literature and
then l shall bring to bear upon it some grand,
glorious, infallible, unmistakable Christian
principles God help me to speak with refer
ence to my last account and God help you to
listen.
| I charge you, in the first place, to stand
aloof from all books that give false pictures
of human life. Life is neither tragedy nor
farce. Men are not all either knaves or
heroes. Women are neither angels nor furies.
! And yet if you depended upon much of the
literature of the day you would get the idea
that life, instead of being something earnest,
| something practical, is a fitful and fantas-
| tic aud extravagant thing. How poorly
! prepared are that young man and woman
for the duties of to-day who spent last night
wadng through brilliant passages descriptive
of magnificent knavery and wickedness The
man will be looking all day long for his hero
inc in the tin shop, by the forge, in the
factory, in the counting room. and he will not
find her, and he will be dissatisfied. man
who gives himself up to the indiscriminate
reading of novels will be nerveleSs, inane and
a nuisance He will be fit neither for the
store, nor the shop, nor the field. A woman
who gives herself up to the indiscriminate
/ reading of novels will be untitled for the
/ duties of wife, mother, sister, daughter. There
! she is hair dishevelled, countenance vacant,
| cheeks pale, hands trembling, bursting into
/ tears at midnight over the fate of some un-
fortunate lover; in the day time, when she
ought to be busy, staring by the half
hour at nothing, biting her finger nails
into the quick. The carpet, that was plain
before. win be palmer after having wandered
/ through q romance all night long in tessel-
ated halls of castles. And your industrious
companion will be more unattractive than
ever now that you have walked in the ro-
nance through parks with p1umed princesses
/ or lounged in the arbor with the polished des-
perado Oh, these confirmed novel readers!
/ They are untitled for this life, which is a
/ tremendous discipline. They know not how
/ to go through the furnaces of trial through
which they must pass, and they are untitled
/ for world where everything we gain we
achieve by hard, long continuing and ex-
haustive work
Again: Abstain from all those books
! which, while they have sotas good things
| about them have also admixture OF evil.
! You have read books that had two elements
, in thenl-the good and the bad. Which stuck
to YOU? The bad! The heart of most people
is like sieve, which lets the small particles
! of gold fall through, but keeps the great
cinders Once in a while there is a mind like
loadstone, which plunged amid steel and
brass filings, gathers up the steel and repels
the brass. But it is generally just the oppo-
site. If you attempt to plunge through a
/ hedge of burrs to get one blackberry, you
will get more burrs than blackberries. You
cannot afford to read a bad book, how
ever good you are. You say: "The influence
is Insignificant tell you that the scratch
of pin has sometimes produced the lock jaw.
Alas, if through curiosity, us many do, you
pry into an evil book, your curiosity is as
dangerous as that of the man who would take
.i /
whether it would really blow up or not. In
a menagerie in New York a man pat his arm
through the bars of black leopard3s cage.
The animals hide looked so sleek, and bright,
and beautiful He just stroked it once. The
| monster seized him, and he drew forth a hand
torn, and mangled, and bleeding. On, touch
! not evil, even with the faintest stroke!
| Though it may be glossy and beautiful, touch
it not, lest you pull forth your soul torn and
| bleeding under the clutch of the black
leopard, "But," you say, chow can find
out whether book is good or bad without
reading itF' There is always something sus-
picious about bad book. never knew an
exception-something suspicious in the index
OF style of illustration. This venomous rep
tile almost always carries warning rattle.
Again: | charge you to stand off from all
those books which corrupt tbs imagination
and infiame the passions. / do not refer nov
to that kind of book which the villain has
under his coat waiting for the school to get
out and then looking both ways to see that
there is no policeman around the block
offers the book to your son oH his way home.
do not speak of that kind of literature, but
that which evades the law and comes out in
polished style, and with acute plot sounds the
tocsin that rouses up all the baser passions OF
the soul To-day, under the nostrils Of this
land, there is fetid, reeking, unwashed litera.
ture enough to poison all the fountains OF
public virtue and smite your sons and daugh
ters as with the wing of a destroying angel
and it is time that the ministers of the Gospel
blew the trumpet and rallied the forces OF
Righteousness, all armed to the teeth, in this
great battle against deprayed literature.
Again, abstain from those books which are
apologetic of crime 1t is a sad thing that
some of the best and most beautiful boob
bindery, and some of the finest rhetoric have
been brought to make sin attractive. Vice is
a horrible thing, anyhow. 1t IS born il
shame and it dies bowling in the darkness
In this world it is scourged with a whip Of
scorpions, but afterward the thunders oil
Gods wrath pursue it across a boundless
desert, beating ii with ruin and woe. WheT
you come to paint carnalty, do not paint il
as looking from behind embroidered curtain,
or through lattice of royal seraglio, but a.
writhing in the sgonies of a city hospital.
Cursed be the books that try to make i'm
purity decent and crime attractive anC
hypocrisy noble. Cursed be the books tha
swarm with libertines and desperadoes, wht
make the brain of the young people whir
with villainy. Ye authors who write them
ye publishers who print them, ye bookseller
who distribute them shall be cut to pieces i
nor by an aroused community, then at last b,
the hail OF Divine vengeance, which shal
sweep to the lowest pit of perdition al
We murderers of souls. l tell you, though
you may escape i'll this world, you vii
be ground at last under the hoof of eterna
calamities, and you will be chained to tn
rock, and you will have the vultures of des
pair cawing at your soul, and those whom
you have destroyed will come around to tor
ment you, and to pour hotter Goals Of fur.
upon your head, and rejoice eternally in TIN
outcry of your pain and the howl of you
damnation. "God shall wound the hair.
scalp of him that goeth on in his trespasses.
The clock strikes midnight. A fair form
bends over romance. The eyes flash fire
The breath is quick and irregular. Occa
sionally the color flashes to the cheek, an
then dies out The hands tremble as thoug
guardian spirit were trying to shake til
deadly bool; out of the grasp. Hot tears fall
She laughs with a shrill voice that drops dea